Starfire in Your Eyes
by northpeach
Summary: Midoriya Izumi grows up on tales of the stars, adventures of a great hero, playing the stories her mother and Kacchan. She had never expected how involved she really was with them though. Not until it was too late, and she was running across the galaxy with Shimura Tenko. In his palace, The Almighty One mourns for what was lost. On Earth, a single mother curses her weakness. w/WRR
1. Chapter 1

The first time a thought bloomed in her mind that made her realize that while her mother was very blunt and honest...there was something she didn't quite tell her, Izumi was ten years old. She'd noticed something was not quite right for years, but the first time she could put it into words Izumi had just turned ten.

When Kacchan and his mom showed up for their yearly visits, Izumi took the chance to whisper all the secrets she learned, include the one her mother held. She told her best friend- her _only_ friend- all the little things that didn't _quite_ add up.

The way her Mother stared up at the starry skies, and the sadness in her face on the clearest nights, when one could pick out the colors of far away galaxies and nebulas. The look in her eyes sometimes, distant and out of reach, like she was a million miles away from where she was standing. The sad curl to her mouth when she thought Izumi wasn't looking.

And most of all, the little promises she made to her daughter when she thought Izumi was asleep. The promises that there was _more_ out there than this. The promises that one day, Inko hoped Izumi would be able to see it. The tales about the Stars, about space, about hope and love and _warmth_.

There was a _look_ on Kacchan's face, like he had a secret like that, like he knew the answer to her questions and _couldn't say._ From adults, she could understand. Adults kept things from children because they '_knew better'_. Or '_just because_'. Kacchan, with that look on his face, _Kacchan,_ her _best friend_, her okaa-san, her oba-san, they _all knew_ this thing and they _wouldn't_ tell her.

Izumi didn't understand then, but she would come to. Not for _years_ after this day.

In the meantime, she couldn't help the swell of hurt and a sliver of anger that rose in her chest.

* * *

There were quite a few things that Inko had her daughter do, that Izumi didn't understand. She did them anyway of course, especially because of how _serious_ her mother looked when she asked for Izumi to do whatever new thing Inko needed of her.

Most often Inko asked Izumi to go to combat classes. She took Izumi to special training camps and senseis and Izumi never understood _why_ her mother looked so worried and insistant when she signed Izumi up for them, but she went. She applied herself. She _learned_.

Because her mother swore one day she would _need_ these lessons to protect herself, and Inko had never lied to her daughter directly for all that she omitted some truths. Other classes included 'Escape Rooms' and special lessons on how to get out of all sorts of messes.

But if Izumi had to pick a favorite set of classes it would be the ones that were meant to sharpen her already very dangerous analytical skills. She _thrived_ in those classes, enjoying the challenge of outwitting her teachers, whose _job_ was to be the most clever person in the room. When she gets far enough into the lessons, her teachers start to combine them.

Making her spar while presenting her with scenarios- sometimes verbal and other times an actual physical obstacle course filled with traps. Those are the best, because it leaves Izumi breathless and smiling, aching in places she didn't know existed but _accomplished_ in a way she can't put into words.

Her mother always looks so _proud_ too, a wide and hopeful smile on her face, like Izumi is inching towards a goal she doesn't know about. It lights a fire in her breast, makes her try harder every time she's out in the middle of the mats or in a course. She doesn't know what her mother is waiting for, but if it's something that Izumi needs to do, then Izumi will _do it_, one way or another.

In her heart, something curls in pleasure as Izumi emerges victorious in her battles, be it verbally or physically. In the light, one might pass it off as just a visual quirk, but in the dark…

In the dark, Izumi's eyes _shine._

* * *

Izumi loves her mother's stories best. On good nights, or on days that Izumi had been bullied particularly badly by her peers, her mother will sit her down and tell her stories.

She called them: '_The Adventures of All Might_.'

Izumi _adored_ them.

The stories were about the universe's greatest hero, and his journey to find his lost love. Inko will weave her words together like a master, her voice changing in all the appropriate places, rising and falling with the swell and fall of the stories. She speaks about villains and the hero who stares them all down with a smile, who makes friends, or at least claims rivals with great and powerful people. She speaks about hope, about pillars, about the strength it took to lead a nation to peace.

She talks of charisma and the man who pulled people together, made those who were so opposite of each other band together for one goal.

Inko tells a riveted Izumi about All Might's lost love, who was taken by villans, and lost her memory, so she has no idea that All Might is looking for _her_. She shares anecdotes about the lover's life, and the small pieces that would strike her, a flash of color, a certain scent, that made her heart ache for a phantom she could never make out in full.

She tells about how the woman- her mother never gave her a name, telling Izumi she would learn it when the time came in their story- remembers small things, like being particularly fond of certain colors and a particular flower. Little pieces of information that fleshed the characters out in her story.

Inko gifts her with jewelry of flowers, preserved in resin that are either strung on a chain, fashioned into charms for a bracelet or even dipped in metal and dangle from a set of hair ornaments.

The hair ornaments comes later, when Izumi is a bit older, but they're a gorgeous set of pieces Izumi falls in love with instantly.

Izumi usually keeps her hair short, but it's long enough she can twist it up and it's thick enough it'll hold. Izumi usually pulls it into a bun like her mother and then pins the two hair sticks into it like an 'X'. Inko made sure the ornaments could take a beating, and though Izumi doesn't realize it at first, both the hair pieces actually have a thin blade hidden inside, allowing her to pair them with anything she wore, as well as ensuring they would survive her spars and keep her hair pinned in place while giving her an extra edge.

Izumi grew up pretending to _be_ All Might, looking for her lost love. She grew up 'beating villains' in the living room while her mother made their meals. She would draw pictures about the stories her mother told her, and developed a very strong preference for certain colors, and that strange flower her mother planted in their garden and told her was the flower from her stories.

Which just made all the necklaces and bracelets kaa-san made with her favorite flower all the more _special_. So Izumi runs around, proclaiming herself as All Might, fighting enemies and during the time that oba-san and enlisting Kacchan in her games. When he visited. Izumi very happily let Kacchan play the enemy or the rival and _fought_ for her victories. Kacchan won sometimes, but Izumi made him _earn_ it.

She grows up basing her entire wardrobe choice around these colors and flowers. Bright blues, the color of a summer sky, vivid reds like the fiercest sunsets, striking golds, like the brightest of dawns, and whites, bright and pure like snow. Blues-reds-golds-whites as bright as the various stars that shine across the vastness of space.

Her mother always looks sad, but also _happy_ whenever she sees them, a wistful smile pulling Inko's lips up and her eyes soft when she tells her daughter, softly like a _secret._

"They suit you."

Izumi _loathes_ secrets. The ones she's never told, no matter how she looks at her mother.

* * *

When Izumi turns fifteen, though she is not yet aware of it, everything is about to change.

Years later, she will say that she _knew_, that she could feel it in her bones, in the way the sunlight turned her skin a pale bronze and how when she looked up into the night, she could _swear_ someone was _looking back_. It was frightening, but exhilarating. Exciting and exhausting in the same breath. That it was there, that knowledge in the song she could _almost_ hear at night, when she looked up at the sky, like if she could get closer the sound would become clear. In the very faint notes that echo from her mother, a sound she had heard her entire life and so did not register as a sound at all, until she knew it look. Until she heard the accompanying notes, and suddenly the notes she had heard her entire life become a _harmony_.

But that comes later.

Everything comes later, for Izumi. There are no answers here, nor will there ever be.

At the time, all Izumi really remembers is being terrified and furious. She remembers wondering what her _mother_ would think happened to her. She'd just been on a camping trip, one of her mother's 'Survival Exercises.' She'd been left in the middle of the beach, far from people and in the center of the trash with nothing but the clothes on her back, and a water bottle. Sure it was a junk heap that most of the townspeople avoided, but if one knew where to look-as she did- there were still some beautiful places in the trash, and certain places that she could climb for the _best_ views of the sunrise and sunset.

She'd been perched there, atop a stack of trash she had climbed hundreds of times before, when movement caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She would have dismissed it, as there were some people who came to the beach-usually to dump their trash to the pile-but this was different. It wasn't that she was in the center of the trash collection, and therefore there were really _no_ people in the area.

No, it had been the particular fact that it hadn't been movement on the ground to catch her attention. It had been in the _sky_.

She'd stood up, lifting her eyes to track the movement, confused because whatever it had been was much too big to be an animal, but by the same token could not be any sort of aerial craft she was aware of, as it was much too quiet and much too close to her.

Except she's wrong.

She is so, _so_ wrong.

By the time she knows to scream, it's too late, her vision blackens, and she's collapsing where she stands.

* * *

Izumi wakes up slow and sluggish and she knows _immediately_ that something is horribly wrong, even before her last memories come back to her.

Her back is pressed into something hard and _cold_ like metal, and despite hearing no chains, when she subtly flexes her wrists and ankles, she knows she's bound with _something_. She keeps her breathing even, her eyes open the barest of cracks as she attempts to take in her surroundings.

It's rather dark, is her first thought, her next is that she had never seen anything like the metal she could make out around her. Every breath she takes in is _off_, in a way Izumi can't explain except that it smells and tastes _wrong_ to her senses. There is nothing even remotely familiar about the room apart from its layout.

She knows a prison cell when she sees one.

And suddenly, in the back of her mind, Izumi can hear her mother's voice steady and _sure_ as she promised:

"_One day, you'll need the skills I ask you to learn Izumi-chan I promise. I know it doesn't make sense now, but one day you'll see."_

And Izumi is scared, but she is so, _so_ thankful for her mother in that moment, and every lesson she had ever had shoved into her brain, as her lessons kick in and her mind goes to work.

Yet, in her chest, that long familiar anger curls. It tastes like bitter betrayal in the back of her throat because she's fifteen and okaa-san has still never told her and _now she can't._ Because whatever Midoriya Inko was fearing, whatever thing she was hiding from, it's come from the sky and now it's _Izumi's problem._

And she knows _nothing._

A smile, bright and glittering spread across her face even as her heart pounds beneath her skin.

Because okaa-san isn't here. And answers are beyond this cell. The people who have taken her have the answers to the questions she's been asking her entire life and she's going to _get them._

_Just as soon as she finishes getting out of these shackles. _

* * *

Shimura Tenko did not expect the holding cells entrance to open again after the last visit from Kurogiri. After his last violent, and rather _definite_ '_**no**_' to Kurogiri's 'offer' Tenko hadn't thought he would need to be any clearer. It turns out those coming into the cells are not there for him.

He expected the limp form of the girl brought in between two of Kurogiri's lackeys even less. He watches from the corner of his cell, as they place her limp form on the cot, shackling her with energy-cuffs more powerful than even the ones that stop his own Quirk from working.

He wonders what Quirk they fear she has, that they would put cuffs so powerful on her slim wrists. He watches, silent and curious as the lackeys retreat and leave the female obviously drugged into unconsciousness on the cot.

He has nothing better to do than wait. He knows for certain that Toshi is coming for him, that his family, his King, will not allow his kidnapping to pass unanswered. He waits a few moments more before he stands and approaches the limits of his cell carefully for a closer look.

His breath catches almost immediately, as he takes in details he had not expected to see.

The girl is clad in his King's colors. Tenko could have dismissed that, apart from two reasons. He can see the royal flowers in multiple places, live buds that had been preserved when none but the royal family had them. They had been a specially bred Courting Gift to his King's Intended before he had married her that existed nowhere apart from Toshinori's private garden.

And the most striking reason that Tenko cannot dismiss the colors and the flowers, is the striking resemblance he can see in her coloring and frame to the woman who laughed in the picture Toshinori guarded so zealously of his Queen, paired with the mirror image of Toshinori's facial features staring out of the girl's face.

Tenko has no idea who she is, not really, but in that moment, he _swears_ on his Line that he will see the girl safely out of this ship and to his adoptive father and King. If only to learn the truth about that striking familiarity in her features. He doesn't have the gifts that his Father-King does.

It is only hours later as he watched the girl awaken, that Tenko wonders if he will have to do anything at all. He knows that expression on her face, that fire in her eyes.

He recognizes the beginning rage of a _Star_.

He is silent as the girl pushes herself up and opens her eyes to take in her surroundings. He says nothing still as she examines her shackles and tilts her head. There's something _feral_ and ponderous about her eyes, something _predatory_ that makes a shiver crawl over the back of Tenko's neck.

It's there in her stride too, when she stands and paces her cell. He speaks only when she approaches the edges of her cell and looks like she's not going to stop. It's as if she doesn't recognize the danger she's in, as if she's untouchable by what is around her. He knows no one of such power, who would _allow_ themselves to be captured.

Those who shine with the burning intensity of a Star are _known_.Tenko would _feel_ it. She is _not,_ and Tenko _cannot._

He speaks anyway. Anything to control the situation as best he can.

"Don't," he warns her watching those predator eyes instantly lock onto his form. "You're about to cross the boundaries of your Energy Cell, and trust me, that is a _nasty_ shock to the system."

Her head tilts, curious and dangerous, her eyes flashing as she takes his warning in. He can see the wheels turning in her head.

He has no idea what she's planning, as she watches him from her cell.

* * *

Kurogiri has never been so pleased as he is in this moment. It has been a very long time since Kurogiri could remember feeling anything but the constant pain of _death-dying-rebirth._

He'd only wanted to visit Earth so that he could observe its peoples. He knew this tiny planet, full of those who had not adapted to the Quirks of the Stars appropriately, could hold the answers he needed to finish, to correct, his work.

This helpless, essentially _Quirkless_ people, who held such ties to the First Stars, the Stars of Old, and the First Races…If Kurogiri could find the _right_ human, he could find a link to information he needed, to the Line he needed. They were so _ignorant_ of what they held in their blood, in their past.

Weak...foolish..._blind_.

Kurogiri _hated_ them for the links that they held to the Firsts, that they took for granted out of ignorance. He loathed them for their stupidity, for how _fragile_ they were.

Still, they were his only links to the past, to the Lines that he needed, and so Kurogiri kept coming back. Failure after failure, he continued to return to this _mudball_ and search.

And then his ship had pinged against an energy source that was..._familiar._

Even knowing that he should not stop, not when he had one of the House of Yagi in his cells, Kurogiri had no choice. The moment he had seen _that_ particular energy reading, he could not walk away. Not with a boon that tempting on the other end. A boon that would change _everything_.

If it was what he thought it was, it would be _worth_ needing to fight for it, so long as Kurogiri ended up getting to keep it.

He laughs. (Around him, his crew flinches at the scrapping, warbling, _discordant_ thing.)

* * *

This has been sitting in google docs for literal _ever_. Both wolfsrainrules and I forgot about it. But, here it is! Enjoy!

Yours,

NP and WRR


	2. Chapter 2

Toshinori stares out, blindly, into the vastness and empty beauty of the stars arrayed before him. He is decked in blues and white, the comforting weight of a length of crimson draped about his shoulders. The room is dark, shadows obscuring any details, but the starlight shines on the image of a woman, a wide smile curling her lips. The colors surrounding her are green, like emeralds and vegetation, like the very essence of life and will was captured in a single moment of stillness.

He does not look behind him, toward the portrait, though. He looks ahead as a planet slides slowly in view. The life-giving sun-star of this system is just cresting the western hemisphere.

_It will be dawn, in that place,_ Toshinori thinks to himself. _Her favorite planet in all the Universe I would have given her. I wonder...I wonder if the little one would have loved it so?_

His shoulders hunch, bearing an invisible burden. His head lowers to the glass and his eyes slip shut. There's a shuddering breath and perhaps the glitter of something on his cheek, but Toshinori is alone. He is as he always is, alone, as this stardate rolls around every year, as it has done for so many years. Such a feeble amount of time compared to his own life, and yet it has been the longest stretch of time Toshinori has ever had the misfortune to bare.

The fingers of his hand clench, curling around a small object and he brings it up to his mouth, pressing it into his lips. There are a pair of names, lingering on the tip of his tongue, ones he speaks in his dreams, in his nightmares and ones he allows himself to say aloud, on this day.

Just on this day.

He will be alone, left in peace as he always is, when this time comes. _(Afterwards, not so much, his friends, his family would not allow him to retreat too far.)_

There is a shaky truce that Toshinori won by broken bones and blood stained battlefields, by silent, floating graveyards of fragmented ships. A peace he gave _everything_ for, that he sacrificed _too much_ for. It still holds and it will until the day he dies because he _cannot_ let their deaths be meaningless, _refuses_ to allow it. And he is- he is _allowed_ this one day of mourning, of _peace_.

Even if it is a lie, even if there is nothing _peaceful_ about it, on this day, Toshinori will allow himself this time to remember, to mourn and to imagine the _could-have-beens._

On this day, when he remembers all that was taken from him: a loving wife and righteous Queen ready and able to stand at his side. A daughter he never got to see. Sometimes, he almost can't remember that warbling, tiny, little song he only just got to hear, that he and his Queen had created together at all. And that hurts the most.

He had hoped that she would look like her mother. She would be fifteen Earth Years old by this time.

Inko.

Izumi.

His face twists suddenly, with a feral rage licking over his features like flames. On _this_ day, the only day Toshi ever took for his own sake, _this day_, where the hurts and wounds, the scars are so close to the surface. _This_ day, where Toshi sets aside his Kingdom, and his people, allows others to pick up the slack. The day that his _Rage_ sits just barely under his own skin, when Toshi _wants_ to rampage through the galaxy and _scream_-

_**This**_ is the day that Kurogiri choses to take his _family-pack-starlight_.

As if that was not enough, the failed Star _dared_ to retreat to _Inko's favorite planet_.

There is nowhere Kurogiri could run that Toshinori would not _find him_, would not track him down, would not _fight _him. Taking his family had ensured it, but tarnishing _this place_ with his presence…

Toshinori will _burn him into nothing._

There will be nothing left of his existence, no stray voice, no warbling rhythm, there will _be __**nothing.**_

Toshinori will end his life with his bare hands. He will let the appearance of humanity burn away, allow the Star that sat and _burned_ in his chest _free_. He will ensure this never happens again, will _remind_ the universe that Toshinori of the Yagi Line, was a _Fullborn Star_ with all the endless depth for _feeling_ that came with that. Will _remind them all_ that it was **he** who had stood up, and declared _no more_, he that had lead the charge to _end_ a war that spanned galaxies, and had been _listened to._ If they had forgotten _why_ then Toshi would just make sure it never happened again.

He will remind them why Toshinori had been- and _still _is- _feared_ on the battlefield, why entire armies will run or surrender when he steps into view, when they see the symbols of his fleets, the blues, reds, golds, whites that are his colors. Simply because he spends his years (-_mourning a life unlived, a child who never drew her first breath-)_ much more quietly then in previous decades- just because he _mourned_ even now, and for always- does not mean he has _weakened._

If death, blood and violence is what he must bring to make sure that no one touches his family, that no one attacks him on this day of mourning, Toshinori will see it done.

The All Mighty One of House Yagi will carry it out, lacking in both hesitation and _mercy._

* * *

Izumi stares at the boy- he looks around her age, a bit older- and frowns. She can hear something coming from him. Something she has been straining to hear all her life, that is clearer than it has ever been. She can hear notes like a song, but it's not _right_. Something about it sounds _off_, not the right tone or octave.

He is not the _right_ song, but he is a good one, when she listens. So she pauses, when the boy warns her, and she speaks, her voice scraping from her throat like the crackle of flame, the snap and pop of burning wood. It almost burns, like flames are trying to crawl their way out of her mouth.

"Energy Cell?" she questions, and she waits, listening to the song startle before it's attention focused on her.

"...Yes." the silver haired boy nods, red eyes calculating but not _dangerous_ yet, not to _her_, she knows though she cannot place _how_. "It's made of the same energy that forms your cuffs. Tampering with it will set off the security features. The one you're wearing is one of the _very_ powerful models, so I would recommend that you _don't do that_. It's liable to kill you."

Izumi tilts her head, noticing that this boy's song does not warble or screech in a discordant note the way it would if he had lied_._ She knew this knowledge entirely instinctively, as if it had always been there, lurking in the corners of her mind. Inwardly, she _seethes_ at finding another piece of herself she doesn't even _know._ She turns her attention to her hands and ankles, considering the cuffs that bind them curiously. The energy linking between the cuffs is a bright electric blue, buzzing and crackling audibly. Her gaze lifts, still considering, as she stares at the boundary the boy had identified for her.

She cannot tamper with the cuffs themselves. She wouldn't even know _how_ to do it, even if she wanted to pick them apart. That leaves her with the option in attempting to go for an outside source. The boy is too far, and she can see that he is bound the same way that she is.

He is not an option.

There is nothing in the cell itself that is of any use to her. It's empty, with only the barest minimum inside the boundaries, a slab of metal for a bed and some sort of area off to the side that she is mostly certain is a bathroom. All of it is integrated into the walls. There is nothing else.

But Izumi can feel her hair pieces in her hair. And she has the cell itself. She wonders if the material around her is conductive like metal and electricity. She wonders if she can link the two energy sources, if she can _overload_ the cuffs into releasing her. She reaches up and carefully pulls the two ornaments out of her hair, letting it tumble around her shoulders with the faint scent of oranges. She holds them up to her eyes, before her gaze slides to the cell boundary and her cuffs for another few seconds.

Izumi flips the thin but study pieces through her fingers before she nears the place the boy had told her to stop.

"Wait! What are you-" he starts to shout, something like fear in his voice, the notes of his song spiking, but Izumi is already acting. One ornament links the electric-blue of her wrist cuffs to the invisible cell wall, while the other links her ankle cuffs to the same.

Sure enough, though she had not seen it until her hair pieces touched it, an electric-blue wall of energy sparks to life.

For a fraction of an instant Izumi _burns._ Her entire body tenses, muscles pulling so tightly she fears she may pull herself in half. It _hurts_, it _hurts so bad._ There's a scream sticking in her throat and she violently jerks. For a moment, all Izumi can think is, '_oh kami, I'm going to die.'_.

And then _something_ in her chest _shifts_.

Like a switch, that 'something' begins to redirect the energy she had (foolishly_, stupidly, __**recklessly**_, she could admit later) given a direct link to her own body. It crawls up her arms, like live eels, winding over her shoulders and then _down_ towards her chest, towards her _heart_. For a moment, fear drowns out the outside noises because _she's really gonna die._ But then…

The desperate screaming that doesn't make it past her lips ceases, replaced by a soft voice in the back of her head that lessens to panic, before even that is overwhelmed by the strange, calming sensation flowing over Izumi.

Rather than harm, her body begins to _absorb_ the energy. She is still burning, but it's not her skin heating up, reddening and blackening, it's not her body going into shock, there's no blood oozing from cracked burns, it's as if _she is the fire._ This burning flame that is roaring in her chest is greater than what is outside.

The edges her vision brighten and the last thing she can perceive beyond herself, is the breathless exclamation of astonishment from the boy with the silver hair that shone blue in the light.

* * *

Izumi has no idea of course, but she is not fully human.

Not even _mostly_ human.

(_She knows she's something different, something _other_. She knows her mother holds the answers to the questions that writhe and scream in her head. There's a part of her that _hates _her for that. For the uncertainty, the unknowing and it _hurts_. Izumi has never asked her mother for answers. She can't bring herself to, but every year, on her birthday, she will sit and stare at her mother in stony silence for a time. Sometimes, it's minutes, others it's been hours._)

(_The lies her mother tells her are always of omission._)

(_Those are still lies._)

The truth her mother will never tell her daughter, not even when she _suffers_ for the lack of knowledge, the great secret that Inko never planned to impart to Izumi is very simple, yet complicated.

Izumi is a Star, a child born of a _Fullborn_ Star and a _Half-Light_ Star two of the rarest Stars still left to this Universe. Her body had only been exposed to exactly _two_ Stars in its entire life, the Starfire of her Mother and Father being what had given her Life. Her father's light, while being much more powerful than her mother's, had been surrounding her in the womb, for only a short time- months before her birth.

Her mother's, while drastically weakened, had been with her all her life.

Still, Izumi carried in her heart, a very small Starfire of her own. It had never been allowed to freely burn bright in her as her mother and father's light had done since their birth, but it was _there._

The reason for that was also why she grew up unknowing of who and what she was. Because compounding this odd set of circumstances, was the fact that she had been _raised on Earth._ Earth, which was a planet specifically _for_ those who had Starblood in them, but had not adapted the Quirks that came with Starblood in a way that would allow them to survive on their Star Line's home planets.

Earth, though almost none of those who called it home were aware, was a melting pot of Star bloodlines. That Earth had originally held a native species of its own, who had then bred with those who were left on the planet or had chosen to stay, was not exactly common knowledge. All information on Earth said that they were humans who did not develop any extra abilities. They had personality traits, gifts and talents, but nothing that visibly manifested.

That was not, however, the fact that allowed for Izumi to survive what would have been an exceedingly dangerous, most likely deadly choice in other circumstances.

No, the thing about Earth that led to those with Starblood choosing to leave those of their Lines who would not otherwise _survive_ their home planets, was its absorbent properties. Stars _needed_ to use their energies, needed to be able to bleed off the excess, lest they go supernova. Though most of what would become known as 'humans' had barely any Starblood in them, most, if not _all_, had just _enough_. And the planet that would be called 'Earth' had a natural ability to _absorb_ Star energies, thus it would drain the energies steadily away from those who had no idea of their ancestors, keeping them alive and healthy. Also _unaware._

Of course, absorbing so many differing Star energies-generally suited to one particular planet with its own unchanging or very mild weather, and living conditions- _did_ have an effect on the planet itself.

It had taken what had once been a place of relatively mild and simple climate and made it one of the only places in the universe to have such wide and varied landscapes, weather phenomena, and temperatures, as the planet absorbed and grew to reflect the different planets that the energy it absorbed had come from.

All of these facts meant that, in her entire life, Izumi had never actually been _exposed_ to Starfire beyond what her parents had shared to spark her to life. She had then been placed on a planet that _naturally took_ the energy in her chest. Energy that, as a three-quarter Star, she _needed_ to live. Energy that her body could not _create_ in and of itself, but rather had to be _shared_ between family or _absorbed_ from her surroundings. A task that was _very_ difficult on a planet that did not want to share the energies it absorbed, making it a very difficult task that was really only a move for the desperate.

And yet, for her entire life, from the moment she had breathed her first, the Earth had tried to take the Starfire from her breast, tried to snuff out her light. Her mother, though Izumi did not know it, had provided what she could of her own energies to her daughter, beyond what the Earth took from her. Inko had also guided her daughter during her mediations lessons in how to pull what she could from the Earth as Inko did to survive.

The results of this combination of circumstances meant that Izumi had constantly been working a muscle she had no idea existed, expanding on the _amount_ of Starfire, of energy, she could absorb and hold, but also losing it so fast that her body only ever managed to have what it needed to survive at any given time.

This effect of long term exposure to Earth and its absorbance of Starfire was unknown to the universe at large, as Earth was- though they did not know it- zealously guarded by the Stars of Old. It was a place where truly only those Stars who had ties to the First Races or the First Stars were allowed. There were always Stars who had wandered the Universe, who were drawn back out into space by the call of the stars, of their homes, of their family or friends. None had stayed so long as to discover what happened, generally leaving before their stores had been drained too badly.

As far as the universe at large was concerned, Earth was a death sentence for those who had any sliver of Star in them. Those with Quirks, who were not of the Old Lines, stayed away and dared not venture on the little blue and green planet. Earth was nothing special, save for it's deadliness that it's native people had adapted and survived for millenia.

Inko hadn't had a choice in the matter, as she crashed her ship on Earth almost sixteen years before in an escape pod that had not survived the rough landing after the battle, from which she had barely escaped alive. She'd been trapped, with no communications, the absorbent nature of Earth itself acting like a soundproof room, blocking her bonds and songs of herself and her family from one another.

For the sake of the life growing in her, Inko mourned, picked herself up and carried on. She was defenseless and unless a miracle happened, there was no way she could safely get herself and her daughter off Earth and back to her people. She had no way of knowing how the war had turned out, if Toshi had won, and if he had, who his enemies were. The risk was too great and her heart broke with the knowledge. Still, Inko endured. And time passed.

Until this moment that her daughter was kidnapped and thrown into a cell next to a boy whose silver hair shone blue in the light. Bound with energy cuffs that Izumi had decided in order to get off, she would attempt to overload it even though she had no idea what the metals of her cell were made up of and she didn't know what kind of technology aforementioned cuffs were made with.

Izumi had no idea that, as she connected herself to the source of _pure energy- _which was meant to _kill her_\- she provided her body a _source_ in a place that would not take from her as she tried to fill her own reserves. It was desperation, survival instinct half guiding her action, though she did not yet know she had been so close to being smothered, that had her body converting the source she touched into something it could _use._

_(In her fear, Inko would have condemned her daughter to a slow, wasting death, thousands of years before her natural lifespan reached an end. Those secrets she put off, the knowledge and stories of a father her daughter had never known, she would now never tell them to her daughter. On Earth, Inko is lost to grief and regret.)_

In a rather small control room which monitored the prisoners detained in the holding cells, the guard on duty had a single '_oh, stars,' _before the screen went white and every single audio and visual recording device exploded in a shower of sparks.

The guard in question survived that. What he _didn't_ live past, was the moment the large, twisted hunks of metal that were launched at high speeds through the wall the monitors were mounted on impacted his body. Unfortunately for the designers of this particular class of vessel.

Still the commotion does get noticed.

Which is why Izumi and Tenko find themselves hauled before Kurogiri himself. The guards are under the impression that Tenko had been the one to get the two of them free.

They are _wrong_.

* * *

Tenko's breath _caught_. He felt the fire that burned in his chest sputter for an instant as he _stared,_mouth open.

_**What **__sort of being heard _'_It can kill you if you touch it' and then gave it a __**direct line to their body**__?_

Tenko had been _certain_ he was about to watch the girl burn, watch her body arch under the strain, until it was flung away from cell wall, and landed charred and _dead_ against the cot. _(Something in him had shrieked at the thought, a chorus of no_no**no** _against his brain-)_

That's not what happens. Instead he watches as her body strains, arching, her jaw clenched hard enough he can see the muscles from where he is across the room. And where her body should have been flung away from the wall, instead he sees her _relax_.

His eyes are huge as he watches the energy of the power cells spark through the hair pieces the girl had connected to it, sending her oddly familiar features into stark relief. The energy arced off the conductive metals of the cell, into the cuffs, and then-_impossibly_, **insanely**\- Tenko realizes as his mouth opens and shuts in a bid for words he cannot find- he watches that same energy that should have _killed her_ wind up her arms and then down her shoulders, to her chest and straight to her heart _where it proceeds to be absorbed into her skin._

The sound the girl makes is like a sob, only it's breathless in _joy_, like some pain she's always known has been eased. Her body falls backwards, her hands shaking in the inert cuffs as they reach up to her chest to grasp the material of the clothes she's wearing. Her fingers curl, her wrists twist and then the girl is throwing the now lifeless hunk of metal away.

She takes a shuddering breath and carefully pulls herself into a sitting position. The girl raises her head and turns to look at him and blinks once, twice, then _smiles._

"Never tell me the odds. Unless you want to motivate me," the girl says as her lips pull up into an exhausted but smug, satisfied smile.

Tenko blanks.

The next instant his brain reboots and he proceeds to scream internally all the problems with what just happened.

_Because all the stars above, she just __**absorbed**_ _the energy that __**should have killed her!**_

His thoughts snag and the dots connect because-

_**STAR. **_

_**SHE'S A POWERFUL STAR- ENDEAVOR'S FLAMING BEARD!**_

_Great balls of fire, she had to have been so close to __**starving**_**\- **and Tenko knows exactly what that looks like and he's never wanted to see _anything_ like that _ever again_\- _there was so much energy, __**specifically**_ _designed to __**contain**_ _stars, __**NOT POWER THEM!**_ So how _badly_ had her body needed the energy that if had found a way to _use_ it anyway?

The girl- the _**Star**_\- stands up. She wobbles ever so slightly, turning to face the force field that separates their two cells. Tenko has a single moment of perfect clarity right before a smile stretches her cheeks and she _lunges forward- by all the rings of Saturn!_

The force field goes _down_, even _more_ energy wildly flaring before rushing towards the girl and sinking into her body. Two steps forward, she bends down and repeats previous actions-

Tenko is free.

His starlight flares in his chest and through his hands, disintegrating the powerless cuffs. The girl makes an odd expression with her features and makes to step back, but he instantly reaches up and latches onto her, wrapping his fingers around her slender wrists. He makes sure to keep his Starfire away from his fingertips, not wanting to harm her. His light rises, hovering just over her own skin and in response, her own clumsily pushes itself outwards- probably for the first time _in her life, Yagi's Crown!_

She's missing half the foundations her very self is supposed to be built on. The other half is spread thin and virtually full of holes.

Tenko has the wild thought '_How is she ALIVE?_' and no matter how he looks at it, Tenko has _no idea. _

There's- there's something that he knows, in the mutilated mess that is _her_. Something that sings a song he knows, even if it is in a different tune. Even if it's so soft he almost can't hear it in the first place.

There are too many enemies that his King has, too many that would- many who wouldn't _hesitate..._

There's an obvious curve of muscle in the line of her shoulders, her arms, her legs. Her hands are covered in scars of all sizes and shapes, as well as calluses. Her hair is- _short._ It's very short. The most disturbing thing about her is the lack of a presence in the light- the lack of any control or _familiarity_ in what she _literally __**is**_-

Well. That is deeply, _deeply_ concerning.

She a walking, talking _impossibility._

_(She is _absolutely _related to his King, _sweet **starfire.**)

A horrifying thought dawns.

_How long has she been here?_ _How was she created?_

Just because he had only just seen her brought into the cells- that did not mean that she had not been held elsewhere. Tenko would not have sensed her, not with the suppression cuffs on them both.

Had she been _starved_ and _isolated_ on purpose? Had he been meant to be a _taunt?_ A Star, alive and well, but both of them blocked from one another by the cuffs? She reacted like she knew _nothing_. Had she been kept ignorant?

That part of her that sang so familiarly, that part that was so soft and twisted among the holes, reaching into her to help hold her form together, the part that had been warped just a little as it struggled to support where it could without having _enough_ to do so-

_-His King and Father-_

-that part...if Kurogiri had known...he _would_ have kept her isolated and alone, kept her starved so that she would never shine so brightly as the Crowned Star of the Line of House Yagi. He would have _used_ her, Tenko knows, for research by any means.

Tenko sways to his feet, red eyes impossibly wide, and so very sick to his stomach.

He has no idea what he would have done then, and he doesn't need to find out, as suddenly alarms flare to life, and Kurogiri's thugs flow into the cells. He hears the girl hiss, watches her crouch down, making herself a smaller target even as she keeps herself between him and the group of hired help. (_Does she place less value on her own life versus his? Or is it a high level of faith in her skills?) _Her hands are quick and precise as she lashes out at the guards like she's done it hundreds of times before.

_(And had she?)_

Tenko rushes forward, up to her side- because he is an _equal_\- and he joins her in attacking the group. He's vicious- doesn't even hesitate as Starfire flares through his fingers, activating the 'Quirk' he had been born with. His hands are quick, five fingers spread wide as he reaches for those who approach.

Tenko knows Kurogiri's men, knows what they had planned to do to him- _what they may have done to the girl-_ and he isn't willing to be let _either_ of them be caught again. If he has to be violent and deadly to do that well-

Toshinori may have fought and _won_ peace for the majority of the cosmos, that didn't mean war or life and death fights didn't happen. Didn't mean that Tenko hadn't been taught that it was okay to use any means necessary to get himself home to his father alive and well.

Regardless of this girl's creation, of how she came into existence, she is _Toshinori's blood._

And they are against Kurogiri, who had fought at the side of Toshi's greatest enemy, his second in command, who had- by whatever means- what Tenko was almost _certain_ was a direct family member of his dad's?

Tenko was _not_ in the mood for mercy.

* * *

They get caught eventually. Not before the two of them cause quite a bit of damage, _of course_, but numbers eventually work against them even with the cell door working to funnel the crowd into the room. They get overwhelmed and dragged towards the control room.

Tenko can feel the cold buzz of an energy repression bracelet being pressed into his wrist and scowls darkly at everyone around him as it prevents him from using his Quirk again, or even summoning his Starfire at all. He can see that the guards are pressing a bracelet of the same make against the girl's wrists, and he notices how calm she is about it.

He's certain she has a plan. He's even sure he knows what it is. The level of trust he's placed in her for the short time he's even been aware of her existence is perhaps unwise. Tenko can't help but relax in the painfully familiar confidence about her, and the way she smiled at him.

Regardless, he's made a choice and he's going to see it through. Should things go supernova it's not like Tenko can't handle it- Quirk or no.

Rough hands that grasp harshly at his shoulders, that jerk and pull him up and forward. The beings are not gentle as they haul both him and the girl- he doesn't know her _name-_ toward the command deck. He is not surprised when they're brought to Kurogiri. He _is_ surprised when Kurogiri singles _him_ out as the cause of the communications and video blackout throughout the entire ship.

He straightens, his mind immediately twisting that bit of knowledge over and over in his mind, trying to figure out how he can use it. It's not true, but as long as they _think_ that it is-

Well any advantage over an enemy is a _good_ one.

He sneers at Kurogiri, watching from the corner of his eye as the girl's eyes fly over the layout of the room like lightning. He _knows_ that look in her eye, recognizes the '_I will do this, or I will burn trying, and nothing can or will stop me- not even myself'_ in her eyes. He sees that flash of sharp and _dangerous_ cunning, that same flash that had been there just before she did the impossible and absorbed an energy that should had repressed and killed her.

He sees her edge closer to him.

The guards let her, moving to keep the bracelet pressed into her skin, keeping her wrists locked together behind her back, but they let her get closer.

She glances at him, and Tenko meets gleaming eyes for a fraction of an instant.

_Oh shit-_

* * *

Izumi has no idea what she's looking at.

Or rather, she can _see_ what it is, and her brain wants to stall and _stare_ and **scream**, because _those are stars_ outside the window. Not like a view of the night sky, but _actual stars in __**space**_ _and she has no idea how this happened or why._

All she knows is for the first time in her life she doesn't _hurt_ in a way she hadn't noticed until it wasn't present anymore. For the first time she feels _awake_\- present and _alive_ in an entirely inexplicable way. Energy thrums- _burns_\- in her chest and Izumi feels light headed with it.

Like someone had taken oxygen from her blood and she's suddenly been allowed to breathe again. Her hands shake. She knows from the whispers behind her the guards think it's fear that causes it.

She lets them.

She lets them, and she scans the room.

It….startles her when she realizes she _recognizes_ something. Something so out of place that Izumi immediately zeros in on it.

It's an escape pod.

It's the escape pod from the tabletop _roleplaying game her mother designed for them._

_Oh, _a part of her whispers in quiet realization, in sudden comprehension, _oh. That's what the lies were about. This is what she never told me. This is what she __**kept from me.**_

It burns, and _hurts_, that part of her, but Izumi shoves it away with practiced ease, forces the sting of tears and the dryness at the back of her throat and soldiers on as she always does. This is the here and now and Midoriya Inko is far, _far_ away.

She shifts herself closer to the boy with starlight for hair, who had helped her, had watched her back in the cellroom. She doesn't know who he is, but his Song had been loud once she got the cuffs off, and it had been _safe_. He had helped her, had protected her from the grunts that had come into the cell, and even now he was taking the blame for what _she_ had done without blinking.

She catches his eyes for a moment, and she hopes he can see that she has a plan.

She can feel the thrum of the energy suppression cuffs at her wrists, but that doesn't matter. She knows how to absorb the energy out of them, convert it into something that won't kill her. She can't put it into words, but she knows how to do it. And she can do the same for the boy as soon as she's close enough.

All she needs is a distraction.

Her lips curl just the slightest bit as she remembers the feeling of the boy reaching out and _poking_ at her with his energies, and how her own had risen up clumsy and so very unexpectedly new.

She could recreate that.

Izumi was certain of it.

She waits until she's right behind and to the side of the boy, closest to the escape pods and then she _moves_, just like her mother had taught her _(because she'd __**known**_ _Izumi would need it but never __**warned her, **__told her_ _**how **__or_ _**why**__-)._

Guards fall and scramble to get ahold of her as the now useless bracelet falls to her feet, but she's already moving. One hand is on the boy's cuffs while the other covers his ruby red eyes and she _twists_ the energy. It's so easy, like she's done this forever but this is _impossible_ and _real_ and _she's in space-_

It's like a flash grenade, and she hears people screaming even as she yanks the boy towards the escape pod. The escape pod of the spaceship she is currently aboard. The spaceship whose captain and people _kidnapped_ her from Earth.

Where she is _not_.

Because _**SPACE.**_

Deep breath in the midst of the chaos, a source of information after they escape, answers he mother would never tell her, Izumi has a list and she's going to work down it until she's okay because at the moment it's all adrenaline and _burning fire in her chest._

The controls for opening and setting the countdown for release are hard to spot with the naked eye. It's also a bit different then what she can recognize. It's cleverly hidden. She wouldn't have recognized it for what it was if her mother hadn't been so through in coming up with various hidden escape measures for the 'Space Pirates' in their tabletop game-

_Only_, she reflects as she pulls the boy in behind her, ignoring how _tired_ she is, _it's not so much of a __**game**_ _now is it?_


End file.
